Oh, that nimble Nimda

Another new month, a new security problem. I've already heard three horror stories about "nimda" today. So, for both the PC user and System Administrator, here's the scope on what you need to do to protect yourself:

Microsoft TechNet: Information on the "Nimda" Worm

P.S. Yes, I've kept up on the patches so randompsycho's server should be "nimba-free" - let's hope so anyway.

Is the "nimda" worm the final straw?

ZDNet: Time to abandon the Microsoft IIS ship!

Running Greymatter on Windows NT

If anyone has tried searching the Noah Grey site for help on installing Greymatter, you know it's like the proverbial needle in the haystack. One kind person has compiled all the tips and hints that you need to know to get Greymatter running on IIS:

Greymatter help for NT hosts

and another good tutorial here:

� zeddy�net � .:: Greymatter tutorial ::.

Search Engine Basics

Getting your web site listed on the major search engines has always been an art form. Brush up on some of the basics concepts here:

Search Engine Strategies

God Bless America

Experts are anticipating an increase in hacks and other destructive activity on the Internet in the wake of Tuesday's terrorist acts:

FBI issues cyberthreat advisory

A sneaky DNS trick delivers a mass web site hack:

Tasteless hack leaves web users fuming

This is just plain sick:

Spammers Raise Money For Bogus 'Victims & Survivor Fund'

I would like to personally offer my condolences to everyone that was affected by yesterday's atrocities.

Let the games begin...

Three new top level domains (TLD) are going up for sale and there is an expected rush to stake a claim in these new territories. There is already some controversy over the handling of the ".info" sunrise period with several cybersquatters being able to bypass the system and claim hundreds of domain names.

One important note, ICANN decided not to restrict the already well developed ".org" TLD to just non-profit organizations.

Icann unveils new domain names

Not-so-stupid Web tricks

One of the little tricks we've talked about here is how to do those nifty little pop-up windows. They serve a good purpose when you need to pull up a graphic or page in a separate window and still allow your reader to stay on the parent page. But, as with all good things, someone will think of a way to exploit it. Thus the use of "exit pop-ups" using onunload javascript event. The worse offenders are the scripts that spawn a new page that again spawns another page, on into infinity.

Finally, I have run across a way to defeat these pesty little scripts:

Pop-ups from hell

Have you noticed that I post most things on Monday morning? I have no clue why - it just seems to work out that way. Maybe it's just my way of getting back into the swing of things after the weekend.

So, what's a web site without some database functionality? Even randompsycho.org has it's meager little forum, which is of course DB driven. Take a look at some of the tools that are available for building that dynamic database driven site:

The Best WYSIWYG Web Database Tools

Clients, what clients?

Back in the day when I used to have clients to do web sites for, I encountered more than my share of wacky people. When I ran across this story, it was like "oh yeah, I've been there" - so, check it out and have a little chuckle:

Web Building Clients From Hell

More ASP

This site seems to be just getting started, but they have a decent FAQ section and CodeLibrary. Have a favorite piece of ASP code you'd like to share? You might make a little extra cash while doing so.

Welcome to Active Server Corner

Wow!

This site is "Question and Answer" nirvana! I was so impressed with the information and resources they provide, I added them to the "Tools" section. Covered in detail is ASP, C#, SQL, VB XML and a special section for developer Gurus. Definately "bookmark" worthy.

Developersdex.com - The Web Developers Index

Get Toasted

If you've been a visitor here in the past, you'll notice something new over on the left navigation bar. We've added a forum section so that you can post questions and comments about various web-related topics.

So, let's talk about adding a forum to your web site. The package we installed is Toast 1.5, a free ASP based message board: www.toastforums.com. To run this software, you'll need a Windows IIS capable of serving up Active Server Pages (.asp), support for Access 97/2000 databases and SMTP installed to send e-mail via CDONTS or other mail object. The "readme.txt" states that you can install Toast in three easy steps and there isn't a step three. Well...in reality it took more than three steps, but I got it going eventually.

The biggest snag that I encountered was that my WinNT 4.0 box didn't have the most recent version of VBscript installed. This resulted in a "Unknown scripting language" error.

Since the documentation was pretty skimpy (a FAQ stating some specifics would have been nice), I had to poke around Toast's own forum to find a clue. Now, maybe it's just me, but I usually don't appreciate having to read through a few dozen posts trying to find what I need. If you need Windows Script ver. 5.5 then just say so. Ok, end of complaint.

So, once I got past that hurdle, the rest of the setup was fairly straight forward. I was surprised to find that the product supported several mailing objects and fortunately one that I had already installed on the server. The rest is history.

So, click on the forums link and post a note while you're here.